Establishing Trusted Channels for Confidential Workloads

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Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Perustieteiden korkeakoulu | Master's thesis

Date

2024

Department

Major/Subject

Security and Cloud Computing

Mcode

SCI3113

Degree programme

Master’s Programme in Security and Cloud Computing (SECCLO)

Language

en

Pages

56

Series

Abstract

Confidential Computing protects data in-use by leveraging hardware-based, attested Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). It is being rapidly adopted, with design specifications and hardware implementations emerging from all major platform vendors. The market for Confidential Computing is projected to reach $131 billion by 2030. The Confidential Containers (CoCo) project integrates Confidential Computing with existing cloud technologies to enhance adoption. A crucial aspect of Confidential Computing is the establishment of trusted channels, which maintains the confidentiality and integrity of data, similar to a secure channel, while also assuring other machines of the container to which they are connecting and what software it contains. In this thesis, we propose a trusted channel protocol based on WireGuard, integrated with the CoCo project, alongside a method for workload attestation. We implement a proof of concept for the upcoming Arm Confidential Computing Architecture (CCA) platform. Our implementation allows trusted channels between containers and unmodified client applications with an additional latency of just 1.5 s, incurred only during the initial establishment of the trusted channel.

Description

Supervisor

Francillon, Aurélien

Thesis advisor

Sovio, Sampo

Keywords

remote attestation, confidential computing, trusted channel, confidential containers, arm CCA, VPN

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